“I’ll go over to Miss Taisie’s camp afore long,” said he, “and tell her we ain’t broke yet.
“But say, Mr. Dalhart, tell me”—he cast a quizzical look at the other’s rather spick-and-span appearance in contrast to his own—“was you maybe going to church? And you might let me know ef you put bear’s grease on your whiskers too.”
Dalhart, unmoved, stroked his luxuriant beard.
“Nem-mind,” said he. “What’s a man withouten a good baird? Kain’t no woman git away from a baird. Now, I riz whiskers sence I was twenty, and I allus noticed, ever I swep’ my baird acrost a gal’s face she was shore mine.”
“You ain’t got no gall hardly, have you?” rejoined Jim Nabours. “Well, keep in mind there’s sever’l you ain’t swep’ yet, ner ain’t apt to. Laigs is better’n whiskers in the cow game. Keep yore eye on that Sinker kid! He’ll make a cow hand.”
As to this prophecy of the old foreman, events bade fair verification. All the remainder of the day the bed-ground holding increased, and late in the afternoon came a last drove of trotting longhorns, urged on by the ambitious Cinquo, who had relieved faithful Sanchez, found watching a considerable bunch grazing while he himself awaited help.
“You’re living up to them hair pants, son,” was the foreman’s comment.
The full complement of hands now was in camp. The cook’s fire was glowing in its trench. Men were eating three meals in one—beans, corn bread, molasses. They talked, mouths full, contented. Not a man lost; maybe not over ten per cent of the herd gone; they thought the scrape well over. Even Nabours began to talk. It was these last comers, however, who had brought the biggest news.
“It was Sanchez found him,” broke in Cinquo in his repeated explanation. “When I seen him, too, he was daid, plumb daid. He ain’t none of our hands. He got kotched in the run where they piled over the bank.”
“That so, Sanchez? Quien es?” demanded Nabours of the old Mexican.